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Battling Seizure Robots
Battling Seizure Robots is a Japanese animated TV series that began airing in February 1997 on TV Asahi. It's a mecha series that also had a manga serialized in Weekly Shonen Magazine from 1999 to 2005. It was dubbed by Saban Entertainment and aired on Fox Kids in the US from 1997 to 1998. The show is well known for its flashing lights and how it's right in the title. The opening theme is "Ready? Set? Wonder!" by Two-Mix and the ending theme is "Onegai Tanashii wo Tsutaete" ("Please Tell My Soul") by Ganasia. Plot Hideyuki Nagato discovers a giant robot that crash-landed in his backyard. He learns that it's a prototype of the Seizure unit, which have recently revolted against their owners. With his prototype, Hideyuki vows to hunt down, fight, and reprogram all the evil robots. At some point, Hideyuki meets Miku Kawaguchi, who found a rogue Seizure unit and managed to have it on her side. Miku helps Hideyuki reform the robots until her sister Riiko dies after an attack by them. This causes Miku to abandon Hideyuki so she can mourn Riiko's loss. Having found two new partners, Ryu and Jaiko, Hideyuki continues his quest to reprogram the Seizure units. In the final arc, Hideyuki is reunited with Miku and the foursome defeat the alien deity Rozana, who made the robots revolt in the first place. After defeating her and her mecha, peace is restored to the world as the robots return to normal. Cast *Junko Takeuchi as Hideyuki Nagato (Barbara Goodson in the English dub) *Mayumi Tanaka as Miku Kawaguchi (Pauline Newstone in the English dub) *Tomokazu Seki as Ryu Nakahara (Scott McNeil in the English dub) *Megumi Ogata as Jaiko Kimura (Wendee Lee in the English dub) *Ayumi Kida as Itsuki Sugita (??? in the English dub) *Kaori Mizuhashi as Rozana (Melodee Spaveck in the English dub) *Yuuko Kobayashi as Riiko Kawaguchi (Kathleen Barr in the English dub) *Minami Takayama as Noriko Nagato (Venus Terzo in the English dub) Reception In America, Battling Seizure Robots is notorious for being mocked in the Simpsons episode "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo", where it gives the family seizures as a nod to the Pokemon seizure incident. Following this, Battling Seizure Robots was pulled from Fox Kids' lineup and the remaining episodes were released on video by Pioneer Entertainment. Mixx Entertainment released an English translation of the manga in November 1999 in 6 volumes. The localization stopped printing in early 2001. The show had positive reception in Japan, but no rave reviews. The New York Times compared it to Voltron, but with "thousands more seizures". Despite this, no kid in Japan or US ever got a seizure from the show, and it still aired on TV Asahi even after the Pokemon seizure incident happened. The show officially ceased production in 2003. Other info An episode had Hideyuki and Miku loaded into a computer, a la "Electric Soldier Porygon." But the main difference was that while the Porygon episode had only references to a computer virus (even going so far as to have Nurse Joy think there was one in the transporter machine), this episode did have a virus as the main villain. It has been received as being "scarily accurate" to Electric Soldier Porygon, even though it had no flashing lights. The episode also featured the song "Moaner" by Underworld. The virus in the episode was likely where the inspiration for Swayzak from Toonami came from. See also *Planet Chasers: Starlight Excellent, another sci-fi anime that got mocked in the US Category:Anime Category:Anime series Category:Fox Kids shows Category:TV Asashi shows Category:TV Shows